Real-time payments saving real lives

The resur­gence of Covid-19 in 2021 was a sober­ing moment that saw the loss of thou­sands of human lives and left nation­al health­care sys­tems over­whelmed.

In the spring, when that resur­gence hit India, FIS lever­aged its brand-new real-time pay­ments plat­form, Real­Net, to achieve some­thing sig­nif­i­cant.

Accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, by 18 Novem­ber 2021 India had record­ed more than 35 mil­lion Covid cas­es, 500,000 deaths and health­care bills mount­ing to 18,000 Rupees per day for those in need of a ven­ti­la­tor.

With the strug­gle play­ing out on glob­al news out­lets, it became clear that addi­tion­al sup­port would be need­ed to pro­tect India’s pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 bil­lion. FIS took action using two of the tools in its armoury: its inter­nal char­i­ty and its pro­pri­etary real-time pay­ments sys­tem, Real­Net.

Over half a mil­lion US dol­lars was sent by the FIS work­force through its inter­nal char­i­ty – FIS Cares – set up to allow staff to make char­i­ta­ble dona­tions direct­ly from their month­ly salaries to sup­port vul­ner­a­ble col­leagues in India.

FIS was also able to con­tribute to health­care costs, the con­struc­tion of iso­la­tion facil­i­ties and the devel­op­ment of new health­care solu­tions through its real-time pay­ments sys­tem, Real­Net. In this way, real-time pay­ments lit­er­al­ly saved lives in India.

Send­ing mon­ey to India would not have been as effec­tive with­out Real­Net, which utilis­es a full range of exist­ing domes­tic and cross-bor­der pay­ment rails to sim­pli­fy and speed up the pro­cess­ing, clear­ing and set­tle­ment of pay­ments.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, pay­ment rails are very com­plex, with a net­work of approvals, com­pli­ance and logis­ti­cal obsta­cles, mean­ing trans­ac­tions will often take days to com­plete. Trans­fer­ring mon­ey inter­na­tion­al­ly is even more com­pli­cat­ed, because direct con­nec­tions between pay­ers and recip­i­ents are not always avail­able, so inter­me­di­aries such as wire ser­vices are used.

The kind of trans­ac­tion that was enabled by Real­Net would have tak­en between five and six days using tra­di­tion­al pay­ment rails. But the sit­u­a­tion in India required a speed­i­er turn­around. By part­ner­ing with Trans­fer­Mate, Real­Net was able to deliv­er funds with­in 24 hours, which allowed FIS employ­ees to afford med­ical bills and funer­al ser­vices and sup­port their fam­i­lies if a loved one lost employ­ment due to the pan­dem­ic.

The pan­dem­ic proved that in times of cri­sis the abil­i­ty to receive mon­ey instan­ta­neous­ly is essen­tial. Of course, RealNet’s appli­ca­tions extend far beyond pro­vid­ing assis­tance dur­ing crises. It can also be used by busi­ness­es and con­sumers on a day-to-day basis. As an exam­ple, com­pa­nies using Real­Net will be able to imple­ment a sys­tem that pays employ­ees for the day’s work as soon as they clock out, there­by expe­dit­ing work­ers’ access to their wages. Real­Net can also sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the expe­ri­ence of refunds and dis­burse­ments, a con­tin­u­ing prob­lem area for con­sumers and mer­chants alike, with card refunds usu­al­ly tak­ing at least a few days to process.

Despite all the ben­e­fits asso­ci­at­ed with a real-time pay­ment infra­struc­ture, it exists in only 56 coun­tries. Some coun­tries still lack a real-time pay­ment scheme. In oth­ers, where the plat­form does exist, the tra­di­tion­al pay­ment rails work like a patch­work sys­tem in need of an upgrade.

The upcom­ing launch of Real­Net Cen­tral – a cen­tral infra­struc­ture soft­ware that pow­ers real-time pay­ment clear­ing – will allow the imple­men­ta­tion or improve­ment of real-time pay­ment schemes across the globe, cov­er­ing the com­plete process from ini­tial infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment right through to the trans­ac­tion­al ele­ments.

Real­Net will con­nect all major pay­ment schemes and infra­struc­tures across the globe, but for this to work glob­al­ly, all sys­tems need to oper­ate in uni­ty. With the glob­al real-time pay­ment mar­ket set to grow to $26bn by 2023, it is clear to see the momen­tous change that Real­Net will have on the future of real-time pay­ment schemes. The prac­ti­cal suc­cess achieved by Real­Net is a clear indi­ca­tion that get­ting mon­ey to those who real­ly need it – in real time – could help change the world for the bet­ter.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.fisglobal.com/realnet

Pro­mot­ed by FIS